


The Rest is History

by Star_Going_Supernova



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: (mostly), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Fluff, Gen, Henry is Calm Cool and Colleced, Second Chances, That's right you heard me, Time Travel, and only a tiny bit of, she is a Good Girl, there is a cat in this story, there is a surprising amount of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 18:21:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15913722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Going_Supernova/pseuds/Star_Going_Supernova
Summary: It was absolutely absurd when Henry thought about it later. Oh, he’d seen some impossible things in the studio since being lured back in and trapped within its inky walls, but this really took the cake.Or, the time travel AU no one asked for.





	The Rest is History

**Author's Note:**

> This has been in the works since July, but it’s finally done. I thought about splitting it into two chapters, but I wasn't happy with any of the places where I tried to split it, so have it all in one go. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy this little self-indulgence! :)

It was absolutely absurd when Henry thought about it later. Oh, he’d seen some impossible things in the studio since being lured back in and trapped within its inky walls, but this really took the cake.

After the Ink Machine and ‘Bendy’ and Sammy and the Searchers and Boris and ‘Alice’ and the Butcher gang and the Projectionist and everything else that happened in between—after spending what surely had to be weeks fighting for his very life—all it took was stepping into one incorrectly drawn pentagram.

 _Time travel_.

He wouldn’t have believed it—honestly, any other explanation would make more sense. He was dead, or hallucinating, or comatose, or literally anything else. And maybe it actually was one of those, but until something changed, Henry was still going to be sitting at his old desk in the studio, looking thirty years younger.

With a deep, long-suffering sigh, Henry let his forehead thunk down next to the drawing of Bendy taped to the wood.

Once he accepted that he would have to deal with this situation sooner or later, he dragged himself up from his seat. Priorities: find out what the date was; make sure his friends were all still alive and made of flesh and blood; check for any evidence of the Ink Machine; maybe punch Joey Drew.

The only reason Henry wasn’t 100% sure about his last priority was that Joey wouldn’t have any idea what he was being punched _for_ , (probably) not having done any of it yet. It simply wouldn’t be as satisfying for Henry.

Finding a newspaper wasn’t hard, and sure enough, his estimation was pretty close. If he truly had returned to the past, then it would be just a short year or so before he and Joey would have their falling out, after which Henry would leave, and then receive a letter in thirty years time.

What a horrible future to look forward to.

Or… did he? If he was perfectly aware of what was going to happen, then couldn’t he technically change things to prevent the worst from happening?

Standing in a studio that was intact, brightly lit, and buzzing with the sounds of happy and, most importantly, _alive_ employees, Henry grinned like his little devil darling and said, “This is either the best idea I’ve ever had, or the worst.”

And with ideas like that, when you had to determine if the risk was worth it, if it had any chance at being successful—there was really only one way to find out.

• • • • •

Henry found Joey in his office, hunched over some papers on his desk. For a long moment, he lingered on the threshold, emotions warring inside him.

This was one of his best friends. This was the man who would lure him to his death in a few decades time. This was the one person who had always believed in him. This was a future murderer.

Joey looked up at him then, and beamed happily.

In that moment, Henry decided: he’d save them. All of them. Even—no, _especially_ —Joey Drew.

“Ah, he lives!” Joey said. “Don’t tell me you left your desk without needing to be bribed or threatened?”

Silently, Henry nodded. Gosh, but he’d missed this man.

Joey frowned and pushed his chair back. “You all right there, Henry? You look like you’re about to cry.”

Perhaps it was the stress of the long weeks spent fighting mutilated ink creatures. Perhaps it was the shock of being back in the past. Perhaps it was the quiet ache of missing his friend that he’d done his best to ignore for years finally lifting from his heart.

Whatever it was, it made Henry helplessly collapse against Joey and let out a desperate, hurting sob.

Joey started babbling above him, arms instinctively raising to press against Henry’s trembling back, but Henry didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying. All he cared about in that moment was that there was a chance that everything would turn out okay.

A while later, Joey having long since fallen silent, Henry pulled back and offered his friend a shaky smile.

Rather than return it, Joey tightly gripped his shoulders and demanded, “What’s happened, Henry? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Henry said, meaning it with his whole being. “Absolutely nothing’s wrong, Joey, not any more.”

Joey’s eyes rapidly flickered back and forth, looking for what, Henry didn’t know. Whatever he saw only made his concerned frown deepen. “Maybe you should head home early, get some rest. Take a little break, huh?” A grin cracked through his worry and he gave Henry a little shake. “You’ve more than earned it, my friend.”

After everything he’d gone through, Henry didn’t protest, and for the first time in his life, he was the first one out the studio doors to head home. He’d check on his friends tomorrow, when the world didn’t feel like Too Much and he was reasonably more confident that he wouldn’t start crying again once he was sure they were okay.

It felt like the most restful sleep he’d had in years.

• • • • •

All throughout his old morning routine—which came back to him far easier than he expected—Henry racked his brain for what possibly could’ve been the catalyst that led Joey to making the Ink Machine.

If the tapes he’d found littered across the studio were to be believed, Joey might’ve been aiming for immortality, though with the way the others spoke of him, it sounded more like he’d simply gone off his rocker.

Joey, in all the years Henry had known him, had never shown any inclination towards immortality or cheating death. So unless Henry had somehow completely missed an entire aspect of his friend, there had to be something else.

Had he been trying to prove a point? Joey was stubborn enough to actually build a machine meant to bring cartoon characters to life, but murder their employees?

That was what tripping Henry up, the idea that Joey Drew was someday going to be capable of killing people. What could possibly have driven him to that point?

Even after trying to think up an answer on his way to the studio, he was no closer to understanding future-Joey’s motivations. Henry was so deep in his thoughts as he walked through the halls that he was completely taken by surprise when a hand appeared on his shoulder.

Weeks worth of fight-or-flight instincts zapped through him, riding the accompanying adrenaline spike. He lunged forward with a shout, reaching for an axe that wasn’t there, and whirled around, prepared to lash out at his attacker.

Hand still hovering where Henry’s shoulder had been a mere second ago, Norman stared back at him with a dropped jaw.

“Oh,” Henry said, quickly straightening up. “Hey, Norman. You, uh, surprised me.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” His friend gave him a warily concerned look. “You all right there?”

Henry’s mouth opened, but before any sound could come out, his brain caught up to his frantically beating heart and he abruptly realized exactly who was standing in front of him.

Instead of saying anything even vaguely reassuring, Henry instead cried, “It’s you! You’re okay!” and promptly threw his arms around Norman’s shoulders with a joyful laugh. “My _gosh_ , Norman, I missed you!”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. Just… it’s good to see you.”

Staring at him with wide eyes as Henry finally pulled back, Norman asked, “Did you hit your head or something, Henry? We saw each other yesterday.”

He almost reassured Norman that the second concussion he’d gotten from the elevator murder attempt had probably cleared up by now, but thought better of it. No need to worry his friend more than he already had.

“I’m just fine, Norman. Honest.” And with the lack of ink flooding the halls, with the happy laughter coming from a room around the corner, with no danger in sight—he really, truly was.

Though clearly doubtful, Norman let Henry go on his way. That first encounter set the tone for most of the ones that followed. His animators all got happy smiles and pats on their backs, Henry actually managed to get the jump on Sammy and hug him before the grumpy man could even register what was happening, and he was more than happy to let Susie and Wally chatter away during lunch about the studio’s latest gossip.

Gosh, it was good to be back. Henry really, _really_ hoped this wasn’t just a dream or something.

It was late afternoon when Joey practically materialized at Henry’s elbow. It was almost surprising how quickly he’d gotten back into his habit of having an extremely limited awareness of his surroundings while focused.

Pulling up a chair next to Henry’s desk and sitting on it backwards, Joey contemplated Henry for a long moment. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?” he finally asked.

It was rare to hear him so serious, and it was perhaps the only reason Henry didn’t crack a joke at his own strange behavior as he’d been doing all day.

“Yeah,” Henry said. “I’m just happy, Joey.”

Joey shook his head. “But you’ve never been like this before. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d gone crazy.”

“Ah, but you do know better.”

“Well,” Joey said, smiling, “I knew you in college.”

They had a good laugh in remembrance of some of the antics they used to get up to. For thirty years, Henry’d been missing this.

In a last attempt to cast out Joey’s worry, Henry offered him a little shrug and admitted, “I guess you could say that I recently realized how much I have to be happy about.” He nodded towards the rest of the studio. “We’re all here, doing what we love. We’re like a big family, for all that we can get on each other’s nerves sometimes.” Henry turned back to Joey. “What could be better?”

Joey’s eyes were bright. “I’m glad to hear that, Henry. I really am.”

• • • • •

It was easy to fall into a routine after that. The cartoons were doing well, nobody showed any signs of murderous intent, and Henry’s heart ached when he remembered how easily he’d lost all this the first time around.

He watched and waited, day by day, but he never felt any closer to understanding what went wrong. Whatever drove future-Joey to create the Ink Machine was as unclear to him as it was the first time he saw it.

Sometimes, it was hard. Knowing the future, knowing his friends’ awful fates, knowing how broken their happy little world might some day become—it took every ounce of his self-control to swallow words of warning down before they could burst out.

He often wondered if the future he had experienced was set in stone, if he even stood a chance at preventing it. When he thought about how he might have to relive the next few decades of his life just to end up back in the abandoned studio, Henry felt so horribly tired.

And then there were the nightmares.

‘Bendy’ frequented his sleeping mind most often, and he was no longer capable of moving around in his house after dark without turning many lights on. The ink demon was always so much closer than he’d ever been in real life, reaching, grasping, and dragging Henry down with him into dark, unfathomable depths. On his worst days, his breakfast would taste like too-old bacon soup and he’d go the whole day feeling like ink was dripping down his back.

At home, without work to do, his memories would slip to the forefront of his mind, and he’d shake with terror at the slightest shift of a shadow.

That’s not to say Henry wasn’t happy. At the studio, doing what he loved, surrounded by his friends—he never felt happier. He thought it ironic, that his home felt less safe than the actual studio where he’d almost died numerous times.

The solution seemed obvious to him: stay at the studio more. And he did, too. Later and later nights, earlier and earlier mornings, until it came to a head when he fell asleep at his desk to find Joey shaking him awake the next morning.

Joey sighed heavily as Henry sluggishly blinked his eyes open.

“Really?”

Resisting the urge to yawn, Henry said, “It was an accident. I actually did plan to go home last night.” He went to grin at his friend—it was an old joke, his horrible sleeping habits, even if they had gotten worse since his arrival from the future—only to find legitimate worry clouding Joey’s face.

“Why are you doing this to yourself, Henry? I’m not sure if you think I don’t notice, but I know you’ve been putting in frankly ridiculous hours lately. Why do refuse to allow your body to rest?”

Henry looked away, and the familiar mantra of _I’m fine, nothing’s wrong_ tingled on the tip of his tongue.

But something stopped him. A half-remembered conversation, fuzzy from exhaustion, that took place almost a lifetime ago by his standards. This wasn’t the first time he’d been so negligent about his health, and though he could barely remember the details, there had been something back then that had made him hesitant to go home.

This—Joey’s concern, Joey’s attempt to get an honest answer out of him—had happened before. And if Henry wasn’t mistaken, the first time around hadn’t gone well. He’d given his usual answer, brushing Joey off, and… then what?

 _He knew something was wrong,_ Henry realized, _and he knew that I was lying to him about being okay._

The important things he could remember about their argument, which was due to take place in only a few weeks now, included a new tenseness that had never been part of their friendship even in the beginning. There had been a distance between them, one that had felt carefully cultivated to Henry even then, and an irritation on both sides that went deeper than a day’s worth of harsh words.

 _This was what kicked off our argument,_ he thought. _This was—no, it_ ** _is_** _—the moment where everything started to go wrong._

Henry knew it to be true. Excuse him for being dramatic—he was a cartoon animator, after all—but there was a very good chance that the fate of the studio in the foreseeable future depended on what he said next.

This was neither the time nor the place for it, but Henry smiled internally to himself. That sounded unimaginably cool.

So, he turned back to Joey and said, quite plainly, “I’m not fine.”

The look of sheer relief and gratefulness on his friend’s face was more than worth the difficult admission.

“Then, _please_ , tell me what’s wrong,” Joey begged.

Sighing, Henry stood and beckoned Joey after him as he made his way to the nearest coffee machine.

“I don’t feel safe at home, I suppose,” he started. “I’ve been having nightmares, I’m jumping at shadows, and with nothing to distract me, I… think bad things, I guess you could say.”

“And the studio?”

“It’s lively. Even when I’m here alone, it’s… comfortable,” Henry said. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Joey gently gripped his shoulder. “It feels lived in. Habitable. Even when it’s empty, it’s never _really_ empty.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s—that’s exactly it.”

They spent the next few minutes in silence as they prepared their coffee.

“Hey,” Joey said when Henry turned to head back to his desk, “go take a nap on a couch somewhere, okay? Get some actual sleep before you hurt yourself.”

Henry raised his eyebrow and glanced down at his steaming mug.

Rolling his eyes, Joey waved him away. “You and I both know that that won’t keep you awake, not unless you have another half dozen cups. _Sleep_ , Henry. You’re human, believe it or not, which means you need it.”

“Fine,” Henry said, managing to resist the urge to say _‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead,’_ because joking about death so soon after almost dying seemed like too much, even for him.

It was probably for the best that he so easily capitulated to Joey’s concerned demand, as he was stumbling along quite dramatically by the time he managed to locate a couch that wasn’t worn thin. He set his mug down on the nearest flat surface and practically collapsed backwards into the cushions. A slow blink, two, then three, and his eyes didn’t open again.

• • • • •

Something light and soft dropped down onto Henry’s chest, jolting him awake. He blinked up at Joey, standing over him with his hands on his hips and a smile stretching his cheeks.

At first, Henry thought the soft thing was a stuffed animal, but after laying his hand on it and discovering how _warm_ it was, he did a double take. It meowed at him, wiggling around to face Henry, and he stared in surprise as his bright blue eyes locked with smaller, icier blue eyes.

“This,” Henry told Joey, “is a kitten.”

“Yep! And she’s yours now. She’ll keep you company, bother you at all hours of the night, and probably pee on your floor at least a couple’a times, but you’ll love her anyway!”

Henry continued to stare at the kitten. She slowly raised a paw into the air and booped his chest. “You… got me a cat so I don’t have to be alone at my house anymore.”

“What’re you gonna name her?”

“Joey!” Henry pinched the bridge of his nose. “We just had that conversation this morn—what time is it anyway?”

“If that’s you asking how I acquired a kitten on such short notice, then don’t worry. I know a guy.”

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes—Joey’s thought process still confounded him at times, even after years and years of knowing the man—Henry shared a _‘can you believe this guy?’_ look with his, apparently, new pet. “Time, Joey,” he said with enough patience to impress even himself. “How long have I been asleep?”

Joey held out his wrist so Henry could read his watch. “Ten hours, give or take. I woulda let you sleep longer, but I figured you probably hadn’t eaten anything recently, and that’s important too. Now, c’mon, name the poor thing.”

Trying not to be frustrated at the waste of a day, Henry finally looked at the kitten on his chest, actually _looked_ at her.

Besides having light blue eyes, she was completely white from top to bottom, save for a single, splotchy black mark that fittingly looked as though ink had dripped onto the top of her head.

It was obvious what he should call her.

“Serendipity,” Henry decided.

Laughter exploded out of Joey, startling the poor kitten. “Serendipity? Really, Henry? Aren’t you supposed to be good at naming things?”

Henry rubbed the dark ink blot on Serendipity’s otherwise pure white body. “Yeah, y’know. A happy accident,” he said quietly, thinking of a misplaced step into a screwed-up pentagram, of unbelievably lucky second chances, of a miraculous change in fate.

Joey shook his head, still laughing, but didn’t try and convince Henry to change his mind. Crouching down next to the couch Henry was still sprawled on, he gave the kitten a bright smile and said, “Welcome to the studio, Serendipity.”

• • • • •

Joey actually seemed to have known what he was doing when he got Henry a kitten. A pet had always been out of the question to him, what with how much time the poor animal would be forced to spend alone. But somehow, Joey had managed to pick a cat that was perfectly content to either sprawl on Henry’s lap or shoulders, or wander down the hall to the break room for extra attention.

“Are they usually this well behaved?” Sammy had asked once, warily keeping an eye on a motionless Serendipity, calmly sitting on the table at the edge of his song sheets. She hadn’t even attempted to step on them or eat them or pee on them or any other terrible-horrible thing Sammy had probably been imagining.

Sipping smugly from his coffee mug, Joey had told him, “I’m pretty sure Henry mentioned that she took right to the litter boxes. Hasn’t had an accident yet.”

Henry had walked into the room right as Sammy had leaned towards Serendipity and whispered, “If you’re actually some experiment or prisoner of Drew’s, blink twice.”

Rather than do that, she had reached out and bopped him on the nose.

• • • • •

The day Henry and Joey’s argument was meant to take place passed by peacefully. No one yelled, no one stormed out of the studio, and no one angrily swore to never come back. That night marked the first time since his arrival that Henry slept without having a single bad dream.

• • • • •

Serendipity was the only one he ever told about his return to the past. Holding her in his arms late one night, he poured everything out—the argument, the letter, the Ink Machine, the ink demon, the thirty-some years that he’d lost but also gained back.

It was the first time he allowed himself to cry about what had happened. Not just for the nightmares and the terror of the studio and the shock of being young again, but about the heart-breaking horror of seeing the characters he’d created and animated and loved turned into twisted monsters.

“They didn’t deserve it,” he whispered into her fur. “Not one of them deserved it.”

He told her about his tentative, fragile, but oh-so-strong hopes that it would work out differently this time. That he had done enough to prevent all the pain and suffering he’d seen.

• • • • •

Days went by in a pleasantly familiar haze, countless hours being spent doing what he loved. With every week, and then every month, that passed, Henry let go more and more of his worries. The nightmares gradually stopped, and Joey no longer had to cajole Henry into going home for the night.

Henry realized that there was more to it than him simply coming to terms with his, heh, present situation, when he looked into the mirror one day and couldn’t remember what he had looked like when he’d been old. In fact, when he tried to go back over the thirty years of his life between leaving the studio and returning, he found massive gaps in his memories.

“Okay,” he told his reflection, “don’t panic.”

Serendipity brushed up against his leg, doing a surprisingly good job of grounding him. He’d barely even noticed that he was taking sharp, short breaths.

In the end, once he’d calmed down enough, Henry called Joey and told him he wasn’t feeling all that great and he’d be taking the day off to rest. Joey had no issue with this, and that’s how Henry was able to spend the entire day drawing things other than his cartoons.

He drew his future, the one he’d had and escaped and hopefully wouldn’t see again. He drew ‘Bendy’ running at him, he drew the Searchers grasping at him, he drew Sammy looming over him.

‘Alice’ with her half-torn face, the butchered Butcher gang, poor Boris with his chest ripped open. The Little Miracle Stations, the inky tunnel with whispery voices, the Ink Machine.

Henry drew and drew and drew.

And then, when he fell asleep with his pencil still in his hand, he dreamt.

_There was an increasingly loud and rhythmic click-click-click coming from behind him as Henry ran down corridors that were much longer than he remembered them being._

_“Come back here!” ‘Alice’ cried, slowly gaining on him. A glance over his shoulder showed that she carried an axe, raised to take off his head._

_Dodging several Searchers, Henry skidded around a corner and nearly cried out in relief at the sight of the elevator waiting for him. He slammed a random button as soon as he could reach, hunching over in pain and exhaustion as the cage closed and the lift began to rise._

_“That was a close one, huh, bud?” Henry asked, forcing a bit of a chuckle out. When he turned towards Boris, he jumped back, noisily crashing into the metal bars._

_‘Bendy’ grinned at him from Boris’s corner, ink dripping from his tilted head. A small puddle formed on the floor and snaked out like it was a living thing, searching for Henry._

_Henry stuttered out his denial, wishing he had something to defend himself with—heck, even the plunger would’ve been better than nothing._

_Stepping forward, ‘Bendy’ reached out, his stained fingers extending with the intention to wrap themselves around Henry’s neck. Ink stretched its way up Henry’s legs, preventing him from moving, and he could feel a scream building up in his throat when the bars vanished from behind him._

_He fell, twisting helplessly as the different floors rushed by. A screech echoed up at him, and he had a split second to register the Projectionist waiting at the bottom of the shaft before he was swallowed up by a cold pool of ink._

_It rose around him, or perhaps tugged him deeper, and dozens upon dozens of screams pressed against his mind._

**_You left us! It's all your fault! Where were you when we needed you? Join us, join us, join us!_ **

_Hands wrapped around his ankles and wrists, tugging his limbs away from his body as claws dug into his chest and wrenched his ribcage open._

**_His heart, steal his heart!_ **

_Lungs bursting, skin tearing, body bleeding—he wasn’t human anymore._

_There was a horrible noise, one that encompassed him and made his ears pop, and then there was silence._

_Henry opened his eyes. He wasn’t in the ink. Now, instead, he kneeled on the familiar wooden floor of the studio, whole and uninjured._

_The Ink Machine sat in front of him, larger than life. It gleamed under the weak lightbulbs._

_Staring up at it, Henry felt an unfamiliar weight upon him. He didn’t dare get up. After long moments in the dead-quiet, movement below him made Henry look down. A pentagram was forming around his body, symbols and lines filling themselves in without a guiding hand. He recognized the shape of it: it was the one he’d step into by accident, the one that sent him blinking back in time._

_The Ink Machine creaked as the pentagram finished drawing itself._

_In the space of a second, when Henry’s head lifted to see if it was working, it was gone, replaced by himself. Jaw dropped, he gazed up at his own visage, done in black and white. Other than that, the only thing that differentiated his appearance from the other’s was his copy’s eyes. They were solid white, no iris or pupil in either._

_“Who are you?” Henry asked. His mind couldn’t seem to decide whether to be afraid or in awe. “What are you?”_

_The copy didn’t answer. Instead, it held up a sheet of paper, one of Henry’s own Bendy designs on it. Small and with soft edges, the little drawing peered up off the page with an innocent expression the likes of which ‘Bendy’ would never be capable of._

_It was a simple character study, one of hundreds he’d done since first dreaming Bendy up._

_“I don’t understand,” Henry said._

_He watched as his copy slowly and deliberately passed a hand in front of Bendy. When it fell to reveal the little devil, he was in a different position. Like a magic trick._

_Henry shook his head._

_After a short pause, not-Henry moved his hand to the back of the paper, pressing against it directly behind Bendy. Ink bled through, dotting the white, but Henry was more focused on the way the drawing slowly began to push off the page._

_With a cartoonish pop, Bendy tumbled free, only prevented from landing in a heap on the floor when Henry leaned forward to catch him. He cradled the plushie-sized toon in his palms, speechless._

_Bendy blinked a few times, orienting himself, before beaming up at Henry. He held his tiny hands up, like a child wanting to be close to his parent, and Henry wordlessly pulled him up against his chest, near his heart._

_He looked up at his double, feeling tears well up in the corners of his eyes as Bendy cuddled up to him. “How’d you do that?” he found himself asking. This toon was nothing like the monsters that had hunted him throughout the studio._

_Not-Henry grinned at him, all lopsided and human. He kneeled down, bringing himself face-to-face with Henry, and raised both hands towards his own chest._

_Still confused, Henry shook his head again, only to freeze when his double mirrored his—_

_Mirrored his movements._

_Mirrored._

_Henry wasn’t looking at a copy. He was looking at himself._

With a little gasp, he jerked awake. Curled up on his chest, Serendipity meowed.

“I’m fine,” he reassured her. The sun was only just rising through his windows, and he took the chance to relax back into his couch cushions. He didn’t remember lying down last night, but there was a pencil on the floor between him and the drawing-covered coffee table, so it was likely he’d just sort of crashed at some point.

He felt lighter, somehow. The image of his white-eyed reflection hovered at the forefront of his mind.

Running his hand over Serendipity’s back, over and over, he wondered at his dream. “I took the place of the Ink Machine,” he whispered into the quiet stillness. “And Bendy turned out okay.”

Perhaps once upon a time, he wouldn’t have given a second thought to what he’d seen in his own mind, would’ve just passed it off as his overactive imagination. But now?

A steady, unshakeable resolve settled in his heart. He had already saved his human friends from their painful fates; maybe it was time to see what could be done about his toons.

• • • • •

After three days of turning the problem over in his head, considering it from every angle, Henry literally ran into the answer as he walked through the studio’s halls.

Joey, obviously distracted and muttering frantically, rounded the corner and nearly knocked Henry to the ground when they collided. He stared uncomprehendingly for a moment, before leaping to steady his friend.

“Sorry, Henry,” he said, bending to pick up a few papers that had escaped from Henry’s grasp. “Wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“Something on your mind?” Henry asked. He accepted the drawings from Joey and shuffled them back into the small pile in his arms. It took a long few seconds for him to register the silence, but when he did, he looked up.

There was a torn look on Joey’s face, and Henry realized he was debating with himself over whether to say something or just pass off his lack of concentration as nothing to worry about. But, just as Henry had told Joey the truth months earlier, Joey seemed to decide to offer the same.

“It’s…” Joey hesitated. “It’s just a crazy idea I’ve been thinking about.”

“Yeah?”

When Henry didn’t offer anything else, Joey continued, “Maybe it’s stupid, maybe it’s impossible, but… Henry. What if we could create life?”

Henry nodded encouragingly, smiling.

Joey looked a little bit shocked, but obliged. “I—well, I want to try bringing Bendy and the others to life. There’s these books I’ve been reading, and I really think it might be possible if I do it right, and I know it sounds completely ridiculous, but I can’t just forget about it now. And, and I’ve been working on these plans, okay, plans for a machine that could help, but there’s a problem with doing it that way.”

Something like shame and horror passed through his eyes, and Henry was pretty sure he knew exactly what the problem was.

He took a deep breath and reached out to grip Joey’s shoulder. “We,” he said.

Joey blinked. “What?”

“It might be possible if _we_ do it right.” Henry tilted his head back and forth in thought, ignoring Joey’s dropped jaw. “But I think we should probably skip the machine. Two smart guys like us should be able to come up with something safer.”

“You—you just—that’s it?”

Henry laughed and nudged Joey into motion. “C’mon. Let’s go take a peek at those books of yours and see if we can’t find a better solution.”

“Okay,” Joey said faintly. “Yeah, let’s—let’s do that.”

• • • • •

Maybe something was forever changed about Henry Ross. Maybe—deep inside him, biding its time—some little bit of the studio followed him into his past, to better prepare him for his new future. Maybe the misplaced pentagram wasn’t so misplaced after all.

Who needed an Ink Machine when you had a Creator? Certainly not Joey Drew.

When Bendy took his first breath, two years after Henry was given his second chance, there wasn’t a drop of human blood or so much as a single sacrifice in him. What there _was_ , was a whole lot of love.

He woke up in a world where two best friends still grinned wildly at each other, where they joked around and had fun, and neither had committed any crime worse than that one time with the spray paint and chickens back in college.

It was a world where Sammy’s greatest devotion was writing the best songs he could, where the most Norman ever scared anyone was when he managed to rig a projector to go off right as someone walked into the room, where Wally was there at the end of every day to retrieve his keys from whichever garbage can they’d fallen into that time.

Where a cat named Serendipity for the happiest accident to ever be forgotten chased her new friend through the clean halls of a successful studio. Where Alice and Boris, when they eventually joined him, were neither hurting nor scared. Where Allison Pendle joined Susie Campbell in the recording studio, instead of taking her place in it.

Where the sketches of monsters and Machines ended up in a box, as forgotten as the memories they’d been drawn from. Henry would never be able to say what made him think that he’d be capable of bringing toons to life with his own hands, and he would never again think about thirty lonely years, and he would never remember how—once upon a time—he’d lost everything.

Henry _would_ find those old, faded drawings and wonder why they felt like they came from a dream. Some of them would make for a great Halloween special, though.

So, Bendy woke up in a world surrounded by smiles and hugs and laughter.

And, well… the rest is history.

**Author's Note:**

> I know it's been pretty quiet on my end recently, but hopefully once I get into a routine now that I'm back at college, I'll be able to pick things up a bit. 
> 
> Anyway, let me know what you guys thought! I had a lot of fun writing this one (especially the dream sequence), and I have a soft spot for characters that just want to save their friends from horrible fates. :)


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